A visual system rooted in Africa, built for the world.
Our brand expresses African confidence, scientific rigor and global standards. This guide defines the logo, colour, typography, voice and imagery that make Greenways-Africa instantly recognisable across every surface — from research papers to smart-city dashboards.
Mark, wordmark and lockups
The mark is three flowing lines — evoking rivers, wind and pathways — set in a rounded emerald tile. It is paired with the Greenways-Africa wordmark.
- · Preserve minimum clear space equal to the mark's tile height
- · Use the emerald mark on light surfaces, the white mark on dark or photographic surfaces
- · Keep the wordmark in Space Grotesk Semibold, tracking -0.022em
- · Recolour the mark outside the approved palette
- · Distort, rotate, add shadows, or outline the mark
- · Place the mark on low-contrast or busy backgrounds
Palette
Emerald leads. Forest gives depth. Electric and gold add signal. Graphite and bone hold the system together in light and dark modes.
Minimum contrast: AA for body text (4.5:1), AAA for long-form reading where possible. Never place gold on bone without a graphite outline.
Type system
Space Grotesk sets a confident, contemporary tone for display. Inter carries body copy with clarity across languages. Fraunces is reserved for editorial and long-form.
Headlines, wordmark, section titles. Weights 400–600.
Paragraphs, UI, data. Weights 400–600.
Essays, quotes, long-form only.
How we sound
State the outcome. Show the evidence. Skip the superlatives.
Prefer plain language. Use terms of art only when they earn their place.
Name places, people and institutions. Translate without diluting.
Acknowledge complexity. Point to what works.
Write for youth and elders, engineers and farmers, ministers and mayors.
We do. We deliver. We partner. Verbs first.
Photography & illustration
- · Real African landscapes, cities, farms, labs and industries
- · Natural light, generous depth, honest colour — no heavy filters
- · People in dignified action; consent and credit are non-negotiable
- · Prefer wide, cinematic framing that shows scale and context
- · Line-forward, geometric, drawn on our grid
- · Charts use the palette in this order: emerald, electric, gold, forest, graphite
- · Maps are neutral base + emerald accents; never decorative colour ramps
- · Icons: 1.5px stroke, rounded caps, on a 24px grid
Systems
12-column, 72px container gutters at desktop, 24px at mobile. Use the emerald hairline grid as a background system, not decoration.
Radius 6px on cards and buttons. Rules are 1px at 10% foreground. No drop shadows for depth — use tone.
Purposeful, brief, eased. Fade-up on entry (200–320ms), marquee for partners, no parallax on essential content.
How we write our name
- · Always Greenways-Africa — one word, hyphen, capital A. Never "Greenways Africa", "GreenwaysAfrica" or "GWA" in public writing.
- · On second reference within a document, "Greenways-Africa" or "the consortium" are both acceptable.
- · When paired with the Consortium sublabel, keep it small-cap or label styling — never a second logo.
- · Regional entities: "Greenways-Africa · Nairobi", "Greenways-Africa · Lagos" — middle dot, single space either side.